Chapter 17
C allie shrank into herself, her hands shaking as she pushed open the door to the apartment, and the sight filled me with rage. She shouldn’t feel like she has to hide. That asshole had ruined her home for her, and even though we were determined to give her a new home, I knew that didn’t take away the pain of losing this one.
The apartment smelled wrong when I stepped into it, my nose wrinkling. It was like a hoarder had taken over, with stuff covering every surface. Was this how she’d lived?
From how wide her eyes were, and the way she walked with her fingers pressed to her lips as she took everything in, I could only assume this was a new state of affairs. Had it taken so little time for her ex to ruin the place they’d shared together?
Callie picked her way through the chaos toward the master bedroom. We followed closely behind, ready to fill the bags with her clothing. Her brows pinched when she opened the closet doors, her expression turning from confusion to fury.
“Fucking fuck!” She ripped her way through the closet, shoving at the clothing with tears pouring down her cheeks.
I stepped up behind her, wrapping my arms over hers to still her movements. “Breathe.”
She did, though it hitched, and she leaned back against me.
“Just tell us which things are yours and we’ll pack them.”
“None of them.” Her voice broke. “All of my things are gone.”
“Maybe they’ve only been packed away into another closet,” Diego suggested. “Let’s look before we panic.”
I let him take her from me. He and Kai walked her around the apartment to check the closets and dressers while Miles hung back with me.
“How did he move so fast?” Miles asked. “We haven’t even had her a week and he’s already tossed her things?”
“Maybe he planned it in advance?” I couldn’t imagine why he would. I might not want a fated bond thrust onto me, but Callie’s ex had chosen to have her in his life. If he’d had any affection for her at all, it seemed impossible to me that he could have stripped the essence of her out of this place so quickly.
Callie’s cry reached us, setting both Miles and me on edge. Primed for danger, we raced toward the second bedroom, where Callie was on her knees. “My nest. It’s—” She broke off with a wail.
The room contained only a simple double bed covered in cheap plaid fabric. Did this fucker actually have the audacity to get rid of an omega’s nest? He might as well have ripped the pacifier out of an infant’s mouth if he wanted to cause that much needless anguish with his casual cruelty.
I didn’t want coming here to be a failed endeavor, but it was quickly feeling that way. They must have found some things of hers because one of the bags on Diego’s shoulder looked about half-full.
Kai wrapped her in his arms, his expression twisted. I didn’t entirely know what a bond felt like, but I knew emotions were shared through it, and feeling even a fraction of the pain she felt right now had to be agony. “We’ll make you a new nest.”
We would, too. We weren’t going to have an omega in our home and deny her that basic comfort. Fury twisted in my chest on her behalf. The fact that her ex trashed something so sacred made me want to push him off the roof.
“It’s not fair . I paid for all of the furniture in here. All he got rid of were my things.”
“Then take back everything you paid for,” I said. “If he’s going to be a jackass, he doesn’t deserve any of the things you’ve shared with him.”
As if on cue, the movers arrived, ringing the buzzer to be let in. Miles headed down to let them in and guide them to the apartment.
While he was gone, Kai helped Callie stand and rested his chin on the top of her head. “You won’t need any furniture at the house, but if you want to keep it, we’ll pay for storage.”
“I don’t really want it.”
“Take it anyway,” I insisted. “Donate it if you don’t want it.”
Callie perked up a bit. “That’s actually a good idea. I’m sure a shelter or something could use it.”
When Miles returned with the movers, he was tasked with finding a domestic violence shelter that was equipped to take the same-day donation of furniture while the rest of us stripped down the bed to take the frame and mattress, removed clothing from dressers, and emptied out any piece of furniture that Callie had purchased for the apartment so the movers could take it away. Some people might think it was a bit petty, but it was really fucking satisfying to know we would force that asshole to see the void of her absence. He couldn’t just take everything from her and have no repercussions.
Callie found a few more items tucked here and there as we worked, tossing them into the bags. She even took her partially used toiletries out of the bathroom, and meals she had pre-cooked and frozen from the freezer, taking them across the hall to give to her neighbor. A petty move I was truly proud of.
“What the fuck is going on?”
We all turned to the voice in the doorway, a totally average asshole standing there with a beet-red face, a brunette woman on his arm, and an older version of that same woman standing behind them.
I knew immediately who it was, given how sharply Callie’s scent switched to fermented apples and scorched sugar.
The ex.
“I’m taking my stuff,” Callie snapped, her face still pink from crying.
“Like fucking hell you are,” the asshole growled.
“Jerry, who is this?” the brunette asked.
“Just a bitch,” he replied.
I moved without thinking, stalking toward him with murderous intent. He shrank away.
“Watch your fucking mouth. Callie’s entitled to take her things, which it seems you were very quick to get rid of, and all the things she paid for are no longer your problem.”
The two women with him looked both confused and angry.
“Mom, why don’t you wait outside?” the brunette said.
“No,” Jerry snapped. “This isn’t Callie’s home anymore. Katrina and I live here with her mother, and Callie is no longer welcome.”
I glanced back to Callie, seeing her little fists clenched, fury vibrating her whole body. Jerry slipped right past me and got up in her face.
“You broke into my fucking apartment?”
“ Our apartment!”
“No, it’s mine. We broke up.”
“I pay the fucking rent! And we only broke up because you got drunk-married and fucking left me in another city, you goddamn selfish fuck! How could you do that to me? I can’t believe I almost had a baby with you! How can you replace me so quickly?” She choked on a sob before saying much more quietly, “I don’t understand what I did wrong.”
My anger with her ex was far easier for me to deal with than Callie’s pain.
Kai put himself bodily between Callie and Jerry. “We’ve gotten all her things and we’re heading out. Let’s just leave it at this.”
“And who the fuck are you?”
“Her—”
“Friend, Jerry. Maybe you would fucking recognize it if you had any. Not everyone is a selfish jackass.”
“I see why he left her,” the mother whispered to her daughter, and it took all of my self-control to not spin around and tell them both to fuck off.
“I’m gonna call the cops,” Jerry said. “You robbed my fucking apartment.”
“I didn’t take a single thing I didn’t pay for. Buy your own shit. You don’t get to use me for anything anymore. Did you really think I would have no reaction to what you did?”
“I hoped you would take the hint but apparently not.”
“Yeah, I got the hint about the fucking relationship. That doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon everything I own. And don’t bother calling the cops because I have all the purchase receipts in my emails. I know you don’t have purchase proof for all my stuff that you threw away.”
Jerry shrugged. “It was all trash anyway.”
Callie let out a shriek, diving for him before Kai or Diego could stop her. I was close enough to snatch her out of the air, earning a snarl, and her little nails dug into my arm, but I wasn’t about to let her get charged with assault, as much as he would deserve a feral omega ripping him apart.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said firmly. “Assholes in residence are going to wait in the fucking hallway. Callie is going to get the last of her things and we are going to leave. Hopefully none of us ever see one another again.”
Callie was fuming in my arms, and while it was pretty easy to see that Jerry wanted to say something, he wasn’t willing to take on all of us to do it.
“Fucking fine,” he snapped. He and the two women stepped into the hall and we picked up what Callie had already packed, the five of us slipping out of the apartment. I kept my arms firmly around her and made sure she was facing away from him the entire journey.
By the time we got her down the hallway, she was sobbing, her whole body shaking. I scooped her up bridal style and kept walking. Kai helped me secure her in the backseat of the van when we got downstairs. She curled into his arms crying so hard she was gasping for breath.
“I don’t know what I did wrong. I don’t know how he could…”
The fucker was lucky I didn’t go straight back upstairs and clock him. I didn’t know Callie that well, but no one deserved what he had put her through.
The moving truck was already gone, taking the furniture to someone a hell of a lot more deserving than Callie’s ex. I wasn’t entirely eager to climb back into a vehicle that was going to be filled with the scent of distressed omega. Rolling the windows down wouldn’t be seen as polite and I didn’t want to upset her more, but smelling that scent on her made me want to punch something.
Kai was doing his best to soothe her, Diego too, when he climbed in next to her, but she had just had years of her life thrown back into her face by someone she had thought she could trust, and there wasn’t a hug long enough in the world to change that.
While Miles navigated us out of the city and I tried not to choke on Callie’s despair, I flipped through listings for private investigators. Everyone had skeletons in their closet, and I was willing to bet Jerry was no different. In all likelihood we would never see him again, but just in case, it wouldn’t hurt to have some ammunition in case he decided to make Callie’s life worse.
The drive home was an experience in misery. Callie cried for a solid half of it before she exhausted herself. Kai and Diego rearranged her so she could stretch out in the backseat, but she continued whimpering in her sleep like she couldn’t escape her pain even in her dreams.
I turned over the things we had learned in my head. She had been entirely blindsided by the break in the relationship. Based on her statement that she had at one point been trying to have children with him, I could only assume she had been happy before everything had gone down. And if not happy, at least comfortable.
“I think I should be allowed to hit him,” I said quietly, not wanting to wake her.
“If you get to, so do I,” said Miles.
“There’s four of us,” Diego pointed out. “We could take turns making him suffer for making her cry.”
“Better revenge would be giving her a good life,” said Kai as he stroked her dark hair. “One where she never feels the need to cry like this again.”
That revenge might be better, but it would certainly be less satisfying than feeling the crunch of his nose beneath my fist.